“Book Descriptions: Gabrielle Paluch tells the wild and improbable story of a female warlord in the Golden Triangle. A fearless Burmese opium queen, Olive Yang dressed, smoked, fought, and loved like one of the boys, rebelling against the confines of her gender from a very young age and later carrying on flamboyant love affairs with a movie starlet, a general’s wife, and her own prison warden, among others. Revered by her soldiers, this trailblazing woman reigned over a powerful army that controlled the Golden Triangle and infamously assisted the CIA in their plan to arm militias against Communist Chinese troops. Yet this female firebrand, who was at the center of global events that altered the course of history, largely has been forgotten. Until a few years ago, no one even seemed to know whether Olive was alive or dead. Determined to right this wrong, Gabrielle set out on a once-in-a-lifetime journey to find Olive Yang. Intertwining Olive’s story with her own quest to uncover it, Gabrielle raises hard questions about the United States’ covert intervention in Burma, which is largely to thank for the birth of the modern opium trade, fueling the US heroin epidemic of the 1970s and today’s ongoing opioid crisis.” DRIVE
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